BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS

The controversial 2000 film American Psycho from co-screenwriter/director Mary Harron (Alias Grace) was based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. Set in the fast-paced 1980s, it follows the privileged, handsome, and narcissistic Wall Street executive Patrick Bateman (Oscar winner Christian Bale) who is all about greed and self-aggrandizement. By day he builds on the fortune and material things he has already accumulated, but at night the eviler demons inside him slip out to experiment with a dizzying array of sex and violence.

As a year packed with wonderful new high-definition and 4K discs comes to a close, we’ve selected ten standout box sets that are certain to bring a smile to the home theater buff in your life. Each box is special in its own way: some are hefty with gravitas, others have actual heft. All are sure to deliver ample audio/video pleasure plus a bounty of bonus features to enjoy through the new year and beyond.

The most fun thread in the Earth-bound tapestry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe owes much to the presence of star/co-writer Paul Rudd, whose comedic charms and dramatic sensibilities embiggen an otherwise diminutive hero. Two years after the fallout from Captain America: Civil War, when ex-con Scott Lang (Rudd) illegally fought as Ant-Man, he’s nearing the completion of his house arrest and ready to get his life back on track.

Like its sci-fi counterpart, the horror film genre is packed with “cult classics.” But there are only a few horror titles that can lay claim to “classic” film status. Universal Monsters films from the 1920s through the 1950s notwithstanding (see Boxes of Joy on page 28), my list is limited to The Shining, The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, Halloween, and Carrie.

The first decade of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has all been leading to this, an adventure so utterly spectacular that...well, it’s going to need a whole other movie to wrap the story up. Jam-packed with a who’s-who of familiar faces (and masks), Infinity War is a remarkably complex tale of conflict and loss highlighted by thrilling, high-stakes action. No time is wasted in thrusting us into the battle against the malevolent Thanos (Josh Brolin from Deadpool 2).

This indie revelation explores sexuality, relationships, and the way that both interact with technology. Therapy doesn’t seem to be opening uptight housewife Ann to her feelings; it takes videotaped erotic confessions for her to overcome her inhibitions. Meanwhile, Ann’s sister and husband are deceiving her with a steamy affair and endless lies. Eventually, a candid, oddball drifter comes to visit and uses his video project to untangle the tape tying up this dysfunctional family.

Although never quite as disturbingly dark nor as overtly sexual as the original, Deadpool 2 is nonetheless a more-than-worthy sequel, recapturing that sublime balance between raunchy comedy and edgy action. The story has surprising heart, as super-powered contract killer Wade/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) struggles to cope with a sudden loss while reluctantly coming to the aid of Firefist, a powerful teenage mutant in crisis.

When an IMF agent gets killed in the line of duty, critical files containing Russian nuclear launch codes that he was carrying fall into the wrong hands. With the help of two IMF colleagues, agent Ethan Hunt penetrates the Kremlin to find out the identity of “Cobalt,” a terrorist who wants the codes to start a nuclear war. Things go awry when Cobalt plants explosives in the fortress-like complex, and Hunt and his team get blamed for the resulting carnage. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Russia, the President is forced to disavow the IMF, leaving it up to Hunt and his team to solve the crisis.

How many more movies and TV shows will simulate virtual reality to tell a “thought-provoking” story about the fate of society? I gave up on Netflix’s Black Mirror because I could not bear another tale of VR gone awry, but Ready Player One brings the pedigree of Steven Spielberg, plus Ernest Cline’s bestselling novel. How could it miss?

Directed by John Krasinksi (star of TV’s “The Office”) and produced by action film director Michael Bay, A Quiet Place is a curious mashup of sci-fi/horror and family drama. The world is under siege by alien creatures who are blind but have powerful hearing capability, which they use to locate human prey. To survive, a family at the story’s center of needs to remain completely silent at all times— not something that’s easy to do when the clan includes young children.

Miguel, a feisty youngster in small town Mexico, loves music, particularly the work of his hero, the long dead guitar and singing star, Ernesto de la Cruz. But because his great-great grandfather abandoned his wife and daughter for a career in music, his family remains virulently opposed to music and forbids Miguel’s having anything to do with it.

Forget the misguided moral and political complaints:Three Billboards is a masterpiece, a dark tale about grief, anger, and the inadequate cushions of community. It’s also funny as hell. Writer-director Martin McDonagh, an Irish playwright (two words that say much), has long explored Biblical themes through vernacular-profane language and deeply flawed characters (his best film until now,In Bruges, was basically about sin).

Thomas Anderson leads a double life. During the day, he is a computer drone for a big corporation; by night, he’s Neo, hacker extraordinaire. Morpheus opens Neo’s eyes to the real world, a vast wasteland where most of humanity has been enslaved by machines that use our bodies as a power source. To reclaim the Earth, Neo must reenter the Matrix in order to overthrow the machines and discover his true destiny in life.

In the 30 years since its debut, Die Hard has been riffed on and ripped off beyond count, and been sequelized no less than four times. This crown jewel of the Fox catalog, unleashed upon audiences with a ferocity, personality, and originality that we never saw coming, will likely never be topped. A very 1980s interpretation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it finds grouchy New York City police detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) stuck in an under-construction Los Angeles skyscraper on December 24th.

Is Star Wars art or entertainment? The simplest answer to that question is, “It’s both, of course.” But Episode VIII: The Last Jedi proves the question to be less simple than it first appears. Because of all its silly creatures, swashbuckling adventure sequences, million-dollar-a-minute special effects, and cheeky humor, The Last Jedi is at its heart a deeply personal, deeply thematic, deeply deconstructive, big-budget indie film that forces longtime fans to contend with questions about what Star Wars even is and why its unique blend of mythology, arthouse pastiche, and B-movie kitsch works as well as it does.